Pastor: Microchipping Humans Is Straight Out of Revelation

It's been making big headlines: The first American workers are getting injected with microchips.

The Wisconsin company that's doing it says it's the future, and it's all about convenience. But the idea is sparking opposition from both religious and secular circles, from biblical End Times concerns to privacy rights.

Pastor Dave Doyle from Hope Christian Fellowship Church in Iowa says the microchips make him think about the "mark of the Beast" from Revelation 13:16, according to KCRG in Cedar Rapids.

"I take microchipping as a form of the mark. There's many pieces of the mark, and then again, all these pieces of the mark is designed to control," he said.

Doyle is referring to the news story about a company called Three Square Market that is giving their employees the option to get a microchip implanted in their hand. Read more here.

Employees can use these chips to enter their work building, login to a computer, or buy things from the company vending machine.

But Pastor Doyle thinks this type of technology could eventually be used by governments to abuse people's rights. He believes the chips are something that will one day be forced on people.

"It will eventually become something that's mandatory, and for those who refuse it, you will have to deal with the authorities who don't appreciate your opinions," he says.

The company says that the chips won't have GPS tracking and that it is FDA approved.

But Doyle says he will tell his congregation to never get chipped.

"If I'm told I need to go against the Word of God, I would prefer to go to jail first. And Christians need to have that mindset because that's what we're going to go against," he said.

There are plenty of concerns on the secular side as well. Illinois Institute of Technology professor Jeremy Hajek says the legal system needs to catch up with this new technology.

"So you're opening up a much larger privacy issue of, well, who owns where you go? Who owns what you do? And who owns what you buy? Are you entitled to that privacy? Or does that privacy not really exist," he questions.

"Do you own that data? Or does the company own that data? And I think the legal system needs to catch up a little bit to this because these are new questions that the current laws on hand may not quite accurately cover," he added.

Three Square Market, also known as 32M, says more than 50 employees are voluntarily getting implants Aug. 1 and are calling implant day a "chip party" at its River Falls headquarters.

The chips are the size of a grain of rice and they are inserted underneath the skin between the thumb and forefinger using a syringe.

The technology is already available in Europe but this is the first time it's being used in the U.S.

Promoters hope the $300 microchips will eventually be used on everything from air travel to public transit as well as storing medical information.

The company is partnering with Sweden's BioHax International, where employees have been using the implants.

Three Square Market is paying for the employees' microchips.

"It's something about the nature of humanity here that you really need to consider internally. Who are you? And what are you? And I think that will determine each person's answer in reality to this question," Hajek said.